


The Renegade

by Cosmite (AlphaMan)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bigotry & Prejudice, Eventual Romance, Fluff and Smut, Memoirs, Multi, POV First Person, Realistic, Slow Burn, Soldiers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 22:21:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19029109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaMan/pseuds/Cosmite
Summary: The War of the Five Kings, and a whole host of other events taking place not just in Westeros, but all of Planetos, too!Told from the viewpoint of a humble soldier.This story will diverge from canon.





	The Renegade

**Author's Note:**

> The first few chapters may be a tad boring and uneventful, but the story will pick up, I promise you! 
> 
> Just testing the waters on this site. 
> 
> Please give me your feedback.

The first thing I remember from that Battle on the Blackwater?

Not the wildfire, which ran rampant throughout our ranks, burning many good men to death; or else disfiguring them for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t the sounds of their screams either, as they lay in pools of their own blood, sweat and shit. That was how they found Kyle, who was on the verge of being a father for the first time. 

Nay, the first thing, and probably the most memorable of all the events that had transpired on that fateful day, would have been the smell of burning flesh. Burning hair. Burning meat.

Burning ham.

Ham.

That is my name, or at least, that is what I’ve been calling myself for as long as I can remember. 

First, I had been Ham, filial son to Jenna. She passed when I was one and ten. Sweating sickness. 

Then, I was Ham, the loyal, and overprotective big brother to Becca, who had died giving birth to her son. Gods, the things I would have done, and the men I would have killed, just to keep her and her boy safe.

Nowadays, I’m just plain old Ham. Ham of Mistwood. 

Ham the soldier. 

Ham the killer. 

Ham, son of No One. Ham, son of Someone. 

This is my story.

My mother had me in the 272nd year after the Conquest. That same year, another Aegon Targaryen was born to the royal family. Great things were expected of that boy, just like how great things were always expected of Targaryens bearing the name Aegon, or Targaryens in general, but he died less than a year later. 

I was born in a ramshackle hut. No midwife. No wet-nurse. No swaddling clothes. No father. My mother said I cried loudly. I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember much from my early childhood. Don’t care to remember, neither. 

 

I guess life can be ironic sometimes. Aegon Targaryen was born to the most powerful family in all of the Seven Kingdoms. He had the best maesters tending to him, and all the guards and knights of the realm watching over him. The gods still saw fit to take him young; a baby in the cradle, just like his brother Daeron before him.

I was born to a whore. That was what my mother did, before we moved to Mistwood and decided to ‘live all proper’. I had no maesters treating me, and in my entire life, I’ve only ever encountered them thrice. 

Aegon Targaryen could have been some great lord. He could have been the next High Septon. He could have even been a king. 

Ham of Mistwood would have achieved none of those things. But he did, inadvertently, kill a king. 

The gods took the life of a hale and hearty Targaryen baby on the eighteenth day of the year. That same day, I was suffering from every imaginable disease a babe could contract before dying. My mother herself had given me up for dead. But I lived. Oh, I lived. I lived to bed women. I lived to kill men. And I lived to raise my own nephew as if he were a son. My son. 

And meanwhile, Aegon Targaryen, who could have been my king, died. He had not lived long enough to do any of those things. 

Sometimes, while I lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take me, I ponder on such ironies.


End file.
